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The world's supply of containment elements beryllium, niobium, zirconium, yttrium, and hafnium would be exhausted within ten years to thirty years if we were to
by gralx 6y ago
The world's supply of containment elements beryllium, niobium, zirconium, yttrium, and hafnium would be exhausted within ten years to thirty years if we were to produce enough nuclear power plants to supply our 15TW energy diet, assuming all other industrial uses of those elements were to cease and no advances in engineering were to provide alternatives.[0] To obtain one-tenth of our diet, we could get from 100 years to 300 years out of nuclear power under those same assumptions, exhausting those materials for the duration of our species due to irradiation of the containment materials.
If nuclear is a stop-gap measure worth pursuing, then we must face dire resource limitations.
[0] Derek Abbott. "Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable?" Proceedings of the IEEE, October 2011
- DuskStar 6y ago> exhausting those materials for the duration of our species due to irradiation of the containment materials. Not going to comment on the rest of this, but I'm pretty sure we could reclaim those rare-earths if we really wanted to.
- gralx 6y agoSince speeding up the half-life of the radioactive elements is off the table, what do you propose?
- DuskStar 6y agoI propose that 99.9% of the rare earths have not undergone nuclear changes, and so could be separated out. If there are +neutron changes that create unstable isotopes, that would be hard - but ones that resulted in fast beta decay or fission would be easy.
- gralx 6y agoProblems with transporting this large quantity of radioactive material (these elements being only a small fraction) to separating facilities and their subsequent handling are obvious, but the stakes are high enough that they're worth considering if what you say is true. Do you you think it's feasible on an industrial scale and without careful laboratory controls?
- DuskStar 6y agoI think the issues with reprocessing low-level nuclear waste (which is what I think this would be) would be more political and economic than practical. But if we truly were running out of rare earths? Both of those would go away. That being said, I would rather live near the power plant than the reprocessing facility. MUCH rather. But another few square miles of superfund site is a fantastic trade for the coral reefs of the world.